


After the Credits Scene

by Sherlock_And_Me



Series: The Devil is in the Detail [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Lucifer (Comic), Lucifer (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 21:31:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11998356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherlock_And_Me/pseuds/Sherlock_And_Me
Summary: A continuation of  The Devil is in the Detail (just a taste)





	After the Credits Scene

“-Lucifer used the flaming sword to cut through our Universe- What the fuck is this shit Espinoza?” Fury growled while scrolling through his tablet. 

“That’s, um, that’s part of my report, sir,” Dan answered sheepishly while fiddling with the Mind Stone around his neck.

Despite Lucifer’s comment about headbands and Tiaras, the devil had ordered a custom necklace design that wrapped protectively around the infinity gem. It was both tasteful and simple in appearance, allowing Dan to wear the stone everywhere. It was also probably more expensive then everything Dan owned, including his car and gun, combined. He had never had anyone buy anything like this for him before, especially a male someone. 

Fury, Romanova, and Stark sat on one side of a table opposite of Agent Daniel Espinoza inside a poorly lit unused office. Someone had pulled down the blinds and knocked out all the lights except the desk lamp. Everyone besides Espinoza had a Stark Tablet.

After working for a secret organization for so long, Dan should be used to strange text messages ordering him to take a flight under an alias to an Avengers base, sneak around unseen, and arrive at a dead-end corner of a hallway no one walked through. This should be normal. But he couldn’t help thinking that besides the people in this room; no one on the planet knew where he was. Espinoza would have preferred a normal interrogation room instead of this random office. All that was missing was sheet of plastic on the ground for ‘easy clean-up.’ 

Fury was furiously scrolling with a gloved hand muttering under his breath. Stark looked a little worse for wear. His right eye was sporting a nasty looking bruise and he seemed so tired. Romanova was leaning on the back too legs of her chair staring at the screen with an unreadable expression. She let the two legs crash back on the ground – making Dan jump – before resting the tablet gently on the table and smiling sweetly at him. Ice cold dread pooled in Dan’s stomach.

He glanced at the tablet to see an upside-down video playing on repeat – oh no.

It seems there were cameras inside of the Merry-Go-Round, several actually, because Dan could watch himself and Charlotte from all sorts of angles… He was so dead.

Dan looked around for an escape. The window was closer than the door. They were only three stories up; he might be able to survive the jump.

Fury slammed his fist on the table, but it had less than the dramatic effect he was intending. Dan blinked at the director dumbly while still contemplating the merits of learning to fly in the next three seconds.

Fury sighed at his underlings. He was going to have to make Coulson mandate yet another safety course on the ‘Dangers of Engaging in Sexual Relationships with Otherworldly Beings and/or Other S.H.I.E.L.D Agents (especially if their code name was Black Widow and double especially if you were doing both the before mentioned activities at the same time)’.

“Agent Espionza, if you could focus,” Fury drawled, “and explain where Lucifer and Charlotte are?”

“I don’t know what happened to Lucifer, he’s just gone. Chloe is freaking out,” Dan replied absently while trying to gauge how upset Natasha was. Part of him was also worried about Stark. He just didn’t look like his usual manically happy self.

“Mr. Stark have you and Chloe-,” Dan mentally shook himself after realizing he was about to ask if the playboy billion and sometimes lover of his ex-wife had ‘seen’ each other recently, “-spoken?”

Stark hesitated over how fast the conversation turned as everyone in the room focused their attention on him.

“Not since Pepper and I-” Tony started. “It didn’t seem right-”

“Maybe you should call her,” Dan said emphatically, not entirely sure when he became the relationship coach of his ex-wife. “She could use a friendly voice.”

“Yea, I could do tha-” Tony began only to be cut off by Dan again.

“And I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to Berlin. I was chaperoning a school trip,” Dan explained.

“Its fine,” Stark replied as he crossed his arms over his chest and seemed to sink inwards. Natasha pointedly looked away and Dan’s brow furrowed as he wondered about what happened in Berlin. 

“I don’t want to be here all day! Skip to what you know. What happened to Charlotte Richards a.k.a The Goddess of All Creation?” Fury finally ordered. 

“Err, right,” Dan stuttered before diving into an explanation. You would think he would be used to explaining this shit after all this time.

“So it seems Charlotte’s, um, glowing issue? was getting worse, but she didn’t tell anyone. She plotted to go back to Heaven with Amenadiel and Lucifer and this flaming sword, and I guess kill God with it. Except the only way she could get Lucifer to agree was to lie to him using Chloe somehow. Lucifer figured out his mom was tricking him, but didn’t tell anyone. So he came up with counter-plot to somehow make God and Charlotte kill each other. Things got a little confusing when we thought Charlotte was on a killing spree, but it turns out she was only responsible for one death, and that one was most likely in self-defense. There was this other guy barbecuing people with a blow torch at the same time.”

Stark broke out of his slump to snatch up his tablet and scrolled through – yep, that part was in there. Maybe he shouldn’t just skim the highlights.

“What the hell is wrong with L.A.?” Stark yelped as he pulled up all the associated news-feed.

“I don’t know, man,” Espinoza admitted. “It’s the humans. They’re crazy.”

“Yet somehow the most logical solution Lucifer was able to come up with was to exile Charlotte Richards to outside the Universe so she can create a new one?” Fury asked sarcastically.

“Yes?” Espinoza answered slowly.

“He threw in two pieces of this flaming sword to this new Universe. Did you ever think that S.H.I.E.L.D. might have wanted them?” Fury scathingly asked.

“… You want the blade that causes all mortals to massacre each other and the amulet that makes people think they are God and end up in mental institutions?” Dan questioned while looking at Fury like he was the crazy one. Fury only narrowed his eyes at him.

“Look things were getting out of hand. Even if Charlotte didn’t want to hurt anyone, a pinprick could make her lethal,” Dan continued evenly. “But after what she did to Dr. Martin – oh my god, has any told Loki the doc’s in the hospital?!?”

Dan looked around the room wildly like there was a Loki alarm he could pull to get Earth on alert. After an infamously rocky start, Loki and Linda got along like gasoline and a match. Loki adored Linda and delighted in playing word games with the petite blond. With Loki’s help, Linda was writing a book titled “My Father is God: A look into Omniscience and Absentee Fatherhood,” which drew heavily from her experiences with both Lucifer and Loki. 

Dan looked back and forth between the impassive faces across from him. They really should be freaking out more. If anything happened to Linda Martin, L.A. would be turned into a crater.

“Loki is dead,” Fury stated firmly.

“Hahahahaha, bullshit,” Dan couldn’t help but laugh.

“He is,” Fury declared less than amused. 

Selvig and Loki had been making real progress in building the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, until they had to cannibalize their prototype to fight Malekith in Greenwhich. Selvig hasn’t been able to recreate it without Loki’s help and had become slightly unhinged after the incident and being forced to work in close quarters with the Asgardian Prince. 

“No, he’s not,” Dan replied.

“He is!” shouted Fury.

Dan snorted, “OK, right. Says who?”

“And don’t say Thor-” Dan continued at the same time Fury said, “Thor-”

Fury glared at Dan and added, “Dr. Jane Foster saw Loki’s death as well.”

‘He couldn’t be serious-?’ Dan thought as he looked around for back-up. He was met with Natasha’s stony face, but at least Tony seemed to show a whisper of unease.

Dan turned back to stare Fury straight in the eye and spoke to the director as if he was a small child, “You think Loki, the trickster God is dead, because Thor and Jane Foster saw him die?!? Jane’s a nice lady, but I once watched her walk straight through a busy intersection during rush hour because she was thinking about Loop Quantum Gravity. She is not really observant. Do you at least have a body?”

No one spoke.

“Oh, my god, you don’t have a body?” cried out Dan. “How do you not have a body?”

“It was on another world!” Fury responded. “We were told there was some sort of degradation of the corpse-”

Even Fury started to feel a twinge of apprehension. It did seem odd now that that he thought about it. One would think a warrior race like Thor’s would do whatever it took to honor the body of a prince, even a fallen one. But before he allowed himself to consciously acknowledge the possibility, Dan held up his hands and really hit the nail on the head.

“Let me guess, in this hypothetical ‘death scenario,’ Loki lived long enough to give Thor one last heartfelt speech of remorse before ‘dying’ in his brother’s arms. Am I close?” Dan asked, folding his hands behind his head and leaning back. 

Natasha worried her lip for half a second as she thought back on Thor’s report. She remembered Thor solemnly reciting his brother’s last moments and how his brother finally proved to be as heroic as Thor remembered from their youth. Loki had fooled Thor before…

Dan took their silence as acceptance. 

“Loki is definitely alive,” Dan affirmed, nodding to himself.

Fury slammed his fist on the table again, although this time he resembled a toddler throwing a tantrum.

“This interrogation is about you- nothing to do with- Loki is DEAD!”yelled Fury, refusing to believe the truth. 

Dan looked at the director sadly, this poor man, he thought. 

“What does Asgard say about Loki’s death?” Dan asked not unkindly.

Fury dropped his head on the table into both of his hands. Natasha had to answer for him.

“We haven’t heard from Asgard in a while,” she stated nonchalantly. She studied her fingernails in an attempt to feign indifference.

“Ok-,” Dan began, “What does Thor say about Asgard’s silence?”

“We haven’t heard from Thor in a while either,” she answered while picking at a hangnail. Dan’s jaw almost hit the floor. 

Unexpectedly, Dan let out a huff of laughter and moved to stand up. In a relieved tone, he exclaimed, “Oh, wow. I really thought I was in trouble here, but I’ve got nothing on you lot. I’ve only lost one Devil. I at least know where the Goddess is, sort of. You guys misplaced two Norse Gods.”

To Fury’s annoyance, Dan started making motions like he was getting ready to walk out the door. 

“Sit down, Agent,” Fury ordered. “We are not done with you.”

Dan rested his hand on the back of his chair before looking down at the director with pity. Dan shook his head.

“I mean the only thing worse than losing Loki and Thor, would be losing the Hulk. Can you imagine?” Dan asked in a joking tone. 

He looked around the room hoping to lighten up the group a little bit. Things couldn’t be that bad- but everyone refused to look him in the eye. Dan’s smile slid off his face.

“Where’s Banner?” Dan asked in tiny voice, desperately wishing that this was prank and everyone was about to jump out and yell surprise.

No one answered him again, but this time Dan wasn’t having it. He grabbed the tablet Natasha left on the table before she could stop him and started scrolling through level 8 alerts (there was a level 8 in S.H.I.E.L.D.?). He paused at the first entry.

“Why is there a wanted poster for Black Widow?” Dan asked dumbfounded. He started typing in another name. He didn’t notice Natasha resting her hand on Fury’s gun arm at the breach in clearance level. “Why is Director Fury listed as dead?!?”

“There have been some complications with Hydra over the past few months and the Accords didn’t go so well,” Stark answered monotonously which terrified Dan more than anything listed on this tablet. Stark not joking around? Was the world ending?

“Why do you think we had you sneaking around?” Natasha asked with one eyebrow raised. “Fury and I really aren’t supposed to be here and half the Avengers are locked up or on the run.”

“I thought you were going to-” Dan began, only to stop. The ‘kill me’ went unsaid. The implications of what Natasha said finally penetrated. Dan hardened his resolve- he goes back to work in L.A. and the whole world falls apart? What. The. Fuck?

Dan grabbed the back of his chair, spun it around, and sat back down, straddling the seat, before talking, “Alright, I think it’s time for you to start explaining what is going on.”


End file.
